Posts Tagged ‘sport theory’
Analyzing sports with respect to my five principles of sport and subsequent extension of those principles often exposes failures and inconsistencies in their rules and structures. By sound structure I’m referring not just to the principles in the aforementioned articles, but also to a structure that encourages and permits the highest availability of competition while still taking into consideration that, after all, not every sport can be the same. That said, one sport above all seems to be disproportionately poorly constructed while somehow maintaining its immense popularity in the United States: American football.
While the last sentence is quite damning, there are actually some very good points about the structure of football. However, many of these points are as a result of its more rugby-like past, and rugby, I argue, is one of the few sports which I find almost optimal. Football seems to have taken its genesis in rugby, and change its rules to squash — not foster — fair, unbiased competition, and for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Let’s first take a look at some of the better points of football, as while it’s become poorly constructed, it still serves as a sport which conforms to most of the principles of sport.
Football begins beautifully by having 11 players per team on the field at a time. With 22 players on the field and the field being 360×160 feet, there is plenty of room for play, but generally not so much room that it allows the opposition to give up on a particular play. This generally ensures that both teams stay motivated on each play regardless of the circumstances.
Another wonderful part of football is that it requires participation of both teams. That is, you cannot play a game of football by yourself, as the kick-off requires the other team to catch the ball for a return. Even if that player wasn’t there and the ball was touched by a member of your own team, the opponents would still need to be present to start their plays.
Likewise, since participation of both teams is required, it follows that scoring in football is because of a mistake or generally negative action by the other team. Touchdowns or points from kicks are rewarded from getting the ball past the opposition and into the end zone (or through the field goals). These actions require the other team to either miss tackling the player or not getting his or her hand on the ball when it’s being kicked. The way the scoring is ruled is also generally in football’s favor: while there are obvious problems with how the ball gets placed, a touchdown is scored in a generally unbiased fashion, while field goals are almost always unequivocal. So we have generally unbiased scoring.
While football has its great points, there are more than several absolute failures which make it, in my opinion, the most ill-constructed popular professional sport in the United States, if not the world. Some of these have to do with individual rules which could be easily fixed (although certainly there would still be backlash), while others focus on major principles or procedures in the sport. I’ll try to do explain my criticisms in a chronological order of its place in the game.
Perhaps sadly, the criticism begins immediately: the coin toss. Already we see absolute pure chance making an impact on the game instead of the two competitors. According to my principles of sport, the circumstances and outcomes in the game should be completely the result of the two competitors’ actions. However, at the very beginning of the game we see that choosing sides is nothing more than a child’s game of luck.
We also immediately come upon another criticism: the kick-off. For the sake of clarity, I’m also going to add into this section any opportunity to kick the ball, which includes, kick-offs, punts, and field goals. An obvious remnant of its rugby-like past, where the kick is extremely frequent and important, football has continued the kicking game despite it being relegated to 4th downs, field goals, and when its required (kick-offs, for example). Despite placekickers dominating the highest career point totals in NFL history, the kickers’ duties are few and somewhat infrequent. Even on a football team the kicker has almost no true non-kicking football skills, and is often ostracized from the team. The kick, for all intents and purposes, is a vestigial organ that places too much emphasis on a part of the game which is extremely different from the rest of the game and yet has an incredible, adverse impact. An additional criticism I would place on kicking is the ability to set the ball on the ground for field-goals and the kick-off, as in any other part of the game this would be illegal or considered an incomplete pass or play. There is absolutely nothing about the kick that should remain in football, ironically making the name “football” an obvious misnomer.
As an aside, should football continue to use a placekicker, the field is perhaps too short. As placekickers are now able to kick the ball almost the entire length of the field, if not more, receiving the ball at the beginning of the game or after a touchdown has almost become an automatic knee-down and the play sets at the 20 yard line. Because of the placekicker’s efficiency and expertise and the ability for the defense to run the length of the field and get to the receiver just before or even after the catch is made, this has almost entirely squashed any competition from the receiver being able to gain much more than 20 yard, instead opting to simply catch the ball and take the 20 yard reset. This seems to be a cop-out of competition attributable to the strength of these placekickers and the size of the field.
The next poorly constructed aspect of football encountered would be the set-up for the offensive line. Contrary to popular belief, a quarterback cannot simply make a forward pass to any teammate he or she chooses; rather, only to an eligible receiver. Who is an eligible receiver? According to the NFL rulebook, “All members of the defensive team are eligible. Eligible receivers on the offensive team are players on either end of line (other than center, guard, or tackle) or players at least one yard behind the line at the snap. A T-formation quarterback is not eligible to receive a forward pass during a play from scrimmage.” In my extension of the principles of sport, I posit that it’s best that every player have like participation. In football, however, these defensive players on the offensive line are not eligible to receive a pass in the same way eligible receivers are. This seems to me to be a great misstep in the rules of football that truly handcuffs the available options for the quarterback and his team. It would be best if there weren’t any explicit positions and responsibilities, requirements, or limitations for those positions, with exception of the quarterback and the center, who snaps the ball to the quarterback. A further criticism is that these ineligible receivers may not even pass the line of scrimmage until the ball passes this imaginary line; if all positions were equal, they should be able to drive the defense further back into their own zone.
A small but still important criticism comes at the start of the play for the offensive team. Should the center slight twitch and make the defensive player cross the line of scrimmage, committing a offside penalty, it is not the defensive player who is penalized, but rather the offensive center. It seems to me that the responsibility for one’s own actions would mean that the defensive person who went offside, not the center who simply twitched and never picked the ball up off the ground, should be the one who is penalized.
Similarly, I also criticize the false start penalty, which is incurred when an offensive player moves after the formation has been set but before the ball has been snapped. Players, save the center (who is snapping the ball from the set position), should be able to freely move about their own zone up until and once the center snaps the ball to the quarterback. I see little reason for limiting the movements of either the offense or defense as long as they stay within their respective zones.
Jumping to the end of the game, perhaps my most important criticism of football comes into play: running out the clock. Because football is a largely running clock sport (a sport in which the clock continuously runs, such as soccer), a team who is winning with a very short lead can actually run out the clock by simply having the quarterback kneel immediately after the snap, and then drain the play clock of the entire 40 seconds. With the two-minute warning in the NFL, should the defensive/losing team not have any time-outs, it’s easy for the offensive/winning team to drain the clock without the other team ever having the opportunity to compete for the win. If there is ever a rule in professional sports which permits a team to use the officials or the structure of the game against its opponent, it’s this rule right here. In order to permit fair competition, I would propose the NFL go to a stop-clock for the entirety of the game, even if the implication of such a change is shorter quarters. This would allow full competition at every minute of the game, restoring the clock to an unbiased position unable to be manipulated for one team’s benefit.
Should the game end as a tie and go into overtime, another atrocity against fair competition and equal opportunity arises: a coin toss which decides which team gets to begin the sudden death overtime. Again relying on the luck of the draw, the team which wins the coin toss typically wins the game, as even a three-point field goal is eligible to win the game. By making overtime sudden death and reliant on a coin toss, football is essentially taking the other team largely out of the game, and makes winning the game available to a 40-yard field goal as opposed to a touch down. There are several incredibly easy ways to fix this horrendous rule: keeping the ridiculous coin toss, they could give each team an equal opportunity to score equal points. That is, if the team who begins with the possession scores a 3-point field goal, the opposing team, on their possession, may now go for a 3-point field goal to continue the overtime or go for a 6-point touchdown, which would win the game for them. This easily provides equal opportunity for fair competition.
Despite its immense popularity in America, football has some rules and structures that need drastic changes in order to become a more soundly constructed sport. With a few changes to minor rules and perhaps some very large changes to the structure, I believe football would not only see an increase in fair and equal competition, but see more sustained competition that doesn’t manipulate supposedly objective rules. These changes would not only contribute to a more competitive sport, but also a more sound sport, in general.
An interesting point of discussion was made by a friend of mine regarding a recent sporting event: regardless of what happened in the game, as long as the team came out as the winner, the positive outcome erases any sense of the word “mistake” on any play, by any participant, at any part of the game. The justification for this argument is that by changing any part of the game, including those parts which were previously thought to be mistakes, might change the positive outcome of the game to a negative. Does invoking the butterfly effect help justify this argument?
The butterfly effect, which is a term popularized by an incredibly bad movie by Ashton Kutcher, is an effect which is rooted in chaos theory: simply, it refers the possibility that the air coming from a butterfly’s flapping wings could, in theory, have this sort of effect:
- The gust of air coming from the butterfly’s wings encounters a small gust a wind from the sky.
- The gust of wind changes directions, knocking a leaf from a branch near a house.
- The leaf falls on the sidewalk, which scares a bug, which reacts by running across the driveway.
- A man going to check his mailbox sees the bug near his foot, and reacts by trying to step backwards out of its way.
- As the man steps backwards, he slips on a puddle and bumps his head.
So, as you can see, a simple wind from a butterfly’s wings have had a very large effect on the man’s life. Had the butterfly not been there, or perhaps stopped to take a rest on a branch, the entire event wouldn’t have happened, and the man most likely would have went about checking his mail without adverse effects.
Applying this concept to an athletic event, there are, much like “real life” scenarios such as the one previously described, many variables which could affect the outcome of a game. Certain participants getting playing time during special situations, the ball being hit in a particular way, or an official missing a call could have a large impact on the game play. But, likewise, we cannot discount the small things that, much like the wind off the butterfly’s wings, could also potentially impact the game play in an adverse way: the ball missing a stitch, a chunk of ice stuck on a hockey player’s blade, or a small piece of treat missing from an athlete’s shoe. These small aspects, employed in the right situation, could mean the difference between a positive and negative outcome for a participant.
The issue at hand, which was whether particular players being played in special situations was correct given the positive outcome of the game, seems to fit nicely with the butterfly effect. While one might argue that a better player should have played in a particular situation, unless the outcome of that situation was distinctly negative, it’s difficult to argue against the lesser talented player’s participation. As you cannot assume that a positive outcome would be accomplished by the more talented player, you simply can’t argue for the positive player’s expected participation.
Due to being unable to argue for a positive based on an assumption, it seems reasonable, then, that my friend’s argument is relatively sound: as the outcome of the entirety of the game — including everything I might have previously thought was a mistake — was one that was positive for the team I supported, then without making outstanding assumptions I cannot argue that a change would have made for a greater positive outcome. Likewise, arguing for a “greater positive outcome” would be difficult in and of itself if the outcome was simply a win, and there little more, if anything, else to win. In hindsight of a positive outcome, it seems justifiable to argue that the entirety of the game is a positive as a whole without any negatives. My friend, by unknowingly invoking the butterfly effect, has seemingly made a great argument concerning principles in sport and game theory.
Building upon a previous post which defined the term “sport,” in a rather lengthy post some two months ago, I attempted to lay down the principles behind forming what I would call the perfect sport. In this extension, I came across something rather paradoxical, which I call the Participation Paradox: “. . . the [perfect] sport would have to require each participant to have an equal chance of participation in like-aspects, and yet, at the same time, be unable to be played by just one participant.” The reason this is paradoxical is because sports which have an equal chance of participation can easily be played without an opponent. For example, hockey is a sport in which its participants have like-participation (in stark contrast to baseball, where there are defined offensive and defensive parts of the game for participants), and, at the same time, you could easily play an entire game of hockey without an opponent, thus going against my principles for forming a perfect sport. While I left the previous post unanswered, I believe I’ve now come up with the perfect sport.
First, the process: while the five principles of sport are important in defining the sport, I went straight to the heart of the problem: the Participation Paradox. Finding a solution in which an opponent is not just necessary but required, and yet both participants have equal chances of participation was a hardy task. I first analyzed several current popular sports for inspiration:
- Baseball: participants have distinct offensive (batting) and defensive (pitching) roles, so that doesn’t help. But baseball does require an opponent (to pitch to you [which enables you to bat]) so that’s mildly helpful.
- Hockey: like many, if not all, sports with dynamic offensive-defensive transitions, the participants in hockey have like-participation (again, unlike baseball), but you can easily disqualify your opponent and still play an entire game, so that isn’t helpful at all.
- Soccer: I suggested soccer as the starting point for forming the perfect sport, as the only problem with soccer is the fact that, after a goal is scored, the team which scored the goal starts with possession of the ball, thus giving them an inherent advantage at that point of the game. Very helpful to conceptualize the perfect sport as an extension of soccer, but ultimately it proved fruitless.
- Rugby: rugby, like soccer, seemed like a great starting point. It begins in a huddle where teams have an equal chance of gaining possession of the ball. While there may be other problems with rugby, the huddle was the genesis for the perfect sport: huddleball.
Huddleball, a name seemingly free of any other sports right now, is what I have thus far deemed as the perfect sport. Appropriately named, the sport begins and wholly takes place in a huddle. It is played by two teams of three players each, and players are arranged in a hexagon, alternating individual players from each team, standing with legs approximately shoulder-length apart, foot-against-foot. A huddleball court would appear, obviously, has a hexagon, with each player forming the base of an equilateral triangle, with the point of the triangle leading to a ball the approximate size of a handball, in the following formation:
Now the important part: the rules by which huddleball is played:
- With the players lined up appropriately and the ball placed at the center of the hexagon, the players begin with their hands clasping their ankles. When a whistle is blown, one player from each team, decided beforehand or through secret signs or calls, reaches out for the ball, attempting to first possess the ball. In the fight for the ball, it may bounce well into the area of another player, who may take possession of the ball.
- Once the ball is possessed by a player, the objective of the game is to score a point by throwing the ball either directly or by bouncing it through an opponent’s legs. It too counts as a score should the ball deflect off of another player’s hands, legs, feet, or body and through an opponent’s legs.
- Players without possession of the ball cannot enter into the space of another player. He or she may only guard his or her own space.
- Penalties can be given for entering into another player’s space, touching another player in an attempt to block or throw the ball, or unsportsmanlike conduct. The player which was offended immediately gets possession of the ball.
- Passing to an opponent is acceptable.
- Once a point is scored, the ball comes back to the center of the court in order to begin play by two individuals again.
- The first team to score 10 points is deemed the winner.
Simple rules, but it’s a game in which strategy can be complex, and yet participants of many different ages and skill levels can enjoy a match. So now let’s take huddleball and see if it adheres not only to the Five Principles of Sport, but also the additional principles which qualify it as a perfect sport.
1. It requires advanced physical competence.
You could certainly argue that it takes advanced physical competence to stand in the position for some time while requiring a great amount of arm strength in order to accurately and powerfully throw the ball through an opponents legs. It too would take great skill to throw the ball and perhaps spin it so that, on a bounce, it may change direction.
2. It requires advanced, unlimited strategy.
Certainly there are many strategies employed even in such a small playing field. For example, the game starts with the strategy of who is best suited to attempt possession of the ball. Upon possession, the player may then attempt to throw the ball through an opponent’s legs or attempt a pass to a teammate who may then try to deflect the ball into an opponent’s legs or catch it and gauge the best next step. Teams would have strategies of simply powerful throws, throws which may take curvy or tricky bounces, or deflection plays.
3. Each party must be in direct competition. Further, a score should be as a result of a negative effect or action on or from the opponent.
The parties are easily in direct competition, as the game requires the participants in order to play. Further, in order to score a point, the ball must travel through an opponent’s poorly guarded legs, thus a point is scored as a result of a negative effect or action on or from the opponent, as required.
4. Each party must have an equal chance of winning.
Because the game begins with a representative from each team battling for the ball, each team has an equal opportunity to win the game. There aren’t any instances, barring penalties (which are as a result of an opponent’s infraction), in which any player has an explicit, deemed advantage over an opponent.
5. The scoring must be adjudicated without bias.
This is easily attained because scoring is adjudicated easily and objectively: it is, simply, when the ball travels fully through the legs of an opponent. The scoring never relies on outside adjudication or awarding.
Since huddleball easily passes the test of the Five Principles of Sport, it’s now time to see if it goes further and can be deemed a perfect sport. There are four additional principles huddleball must satisfy.
The sport shouldn’t be able to be played and completed without an opponent.
Huddleball satisfies this requirement because an opponent must be present to be scored upon. Without the opponent, a score can never be made.
In regular game play, the participants should always have an equal opportunity of like-participation.
Every participant has like-participation in huddleball, and the offensive-defensive transition is dynamic. Likewise, this can be further explained by the justification for its satisfaction for the next principle:
The sport shouldn’t have any positions of power.
In huddleball, there aren’t any positions of power. There aren’t any positions which are as explicitly differentiated such as goaltenders in hockey or pitchers in baseball. Each player has like-participation in the game, and roles change dynamically throughout the game and due to complex strategies.
Motivated participation should be present for the entirety of the game.
With so few participants and the court size relatively small, motivated participation is ensured. Further, because the point of attention of all participants is on the player with the ball, there is little else to distract or immobilize opponents. Thus, it’s likely that motivated participation is evident throughout the entire game.
Through careful consideration and influence from other sports, I believe I have satisfied not only the Participant Paradox, but also every principle of sport, as well as the principles which, when satisfied, deem it a perfect sport. As far as I’m aware, no other sport satisfies all of the requirements. Now all that’s left is to actually play huddleball.
Game on?
As I noted in a previous entry, there’s very little even in academic philosophy of sport that defines exactly what the term “sport” means. Perhaps it’s because it’s such a basic question that begs many different arguments and opinions, or maybe it’s just because the definition is some sort of “given” that just happens to be completely ambiguous. Whatever the reason, I think determining what “sport” is helps us better develop a more perfect sport, and I made an attempt at accomplishing this definition in the aforementioned post. In this entry I argue for some additional principles that won’t further define “sport,” but rather help in the attempt to develop a more perfect sport.
Because the five principles of sport are so pertinent to this venture, it’s important that they’re reiterated. Taking them from my previous entry, I resubmit the following five principles of sport:
1. It requires advanced physical competence.
2. It requires advanced, unlimited strategy.
3. Each party must be in direct competition. Further, a score should be as a result of a negative effect or action on or from the opponent.
4. Each party must have an equal chance of winning.
5. The scoring must be adjudicated without bias.
I think it’s a rather basic litmus test to define true sports from activities. I believe most would agree on the majority of these points, with the most controversy coming from the fifth principle. Nevertheless, based on these principles I submit the following additional principles which allow us to gauge which sports are more perfect than others. (For simplicity’s sake, I define perfection in sports as completely fair competition between opponents who have equal chances of winning the game.)
The sport shouldn’t be able to be played and completed without an opponent.
Pretty similar to the third principle, it’s a bit confusing at first, but is actually a pretty simple concept: when analyzing how the sport is played, can one opponent simply disappear, and the game can still be played to completion? There are actually some rather prominent sports which do not follow this principle, including hockey and basketball. You can easily play an entire game in those sports without having an opponent. Other sports such as baseball, however, are dependent on the other team pitching to you in order to bat. Football would be dependent on the other team being able to kick the ball at the start of your offensive play.
I think this additional principle is particularly important because it strengthens the third principle, which is that the score must come from a directly negative action by or against the opponent. While this is true in usual game play, it diminishes the point of the principle, which is to mandate that competition between opponents is a necessary facet of sport. It’s much more perfect if the sport’s very nature is to rely on the participation of both opponents.
In regular game play, the participants should always have an equal opportunity of like-participation.
Seemingly contradictory to my last principle, I also find it best if each opponent has an equal opportunity of participation that is similar to each other, if not the exact same. This principle actually helps the two sports we previously disqualified as perfect sports: hockey and basketball. In each of these sports the game starts with an equal opportunity of gaining possession of the play, and from then-on-out the participation of each participant is equal and in similar roles. Likewise, this principle is also seemingly contradictory on the opposite point: it doesn’t help a game like baseball because one participant inherently takes an offensive position to begin the game, while its opponent takes the defensive position, making the participation explicitly dissimilar, and giving an opportunity of gaining the advantage first to one opponent over the other.
So how can the two principles be rectified? To reiterate, the sport would have to require each participant to have an equal chance of participation in like-aspects, and yet, at the same time, be unable to be played by just one participant. Are there any sports in which this happens? I don’t claim to be an expert in all sports, but I’m unaware of any that conforms to both principles. I can imagine a way in which this may happen, although I admit it seems to have some problems:
While the theoretical game would begin with each participant having an equal chance of gaining possession of the play, after a participant’s score the negatively-affected participant would then gain possession of the play. So imagine soccer, except that the game would begin by having a forward from each team battle for possession of the ball. This would require each participant to be present, but you could certainly make the case that the game could still be played by one participant to a tie, thus disqualifying it from the first additional principle. You could also make the case that by requiring the negatively-affected participant to gain possession of the play after the score, it disqualifies the sport from the second principle of mandating that each participant has equal participation. So perhaps this was nothing more than a failed attempt at rectifying these two principles. I’d welcome any input on real or theoretical sports which would satisfy these two principles, though!
While I spent a lot of time explaining and attempting to rectify the previous two additional principles, I still have some additional principles. The next one also echoes a previous entry:
The sport shouldn’t have any positions of power.
The entry I’m referencing with this point argued that some sports have positions where the duties or skills employed have an adverse effect on the game. While sports can and should have players in distinct roles, none of the positions should have so much power that they inherently have unparalleled control over the outcome of the game. Positions such as these include the goaltender in hockey, goalkeeper in soccer, pitcher in baseball, and the quarterback in football (albeit perhaps to a lesser extent, as I noted in the referenced entry). In my view of a perfect sport, every position in the sport should have distinct roles but an equal effect on the outcome of the game.
The last principle I would argue be present in order for a sport to be seen as perfect focuses on motivation and specifications of the sport’s field of play:
Motivated participation should be present for the entirety of the game.
At first this principle can be seen as a “given.” You would assume that each participant would always try to have a beneficial effect on the game, but in particular sports this isn’t always so. For example, it’s common in tennis to give up on an attempt to return a shot that is to the opposite side of the court, and would take a great effort to make an attempt that would have a very low chance of being successful. In basketball, once the shot is taken by the offensive player, defensive players can no longer impede the progress of the ball towards the hoop, and so give up and position themselves for a possible rebound. Football has similar moments when a running back or similar offensive player runs the ball down the side of a field on which there are no defensive players. And baseball has home runs, where the outfielder simply doesn’t have any opportunity of catching the ball for an out. In each of these cases, the sports have times at which all of the players can be unmotivated.
I would argue that a perfect sport would require motivation by at least one player, if not all players, all the time. In hockey, for example, even on a breakaway the defensive goaltender continues his or her motivation. Some sports could solve this problem by simply decreasing the specifications of the field of play. With less room for the participants to move, it encourages them to continue their motivation regardless of their disadvantage at that part of the game.
If a sport does or could satisfy all of these principles, I believe it would be well on its way to being a perfect sport: equal, direct competition for all participants, equal opportunity for each participant to win the game, and unambiguous scoring. While two of the principles seem to be indirectly contradictory, I have little doubt that a sport could be developed to satisfy all of these principles. Just determining what kind of sport that would be is the problem.
Even the least athletic person has an opinion on what is and is not considered a sport. While many would argue that baseball is a sport while chess is not, coming up with the definition that separates those two activities is considerably more difficult. Even philosophy of sport organizations such as the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport, British Philosophy of Sport Association, and Journal of the Philosophy of Sport fail to define what the word sport entails or infers. For this reason, I’d like to propose a set of criteria that at least gauges different levels of what, in my opinion, can and should be considered a sport as opposed to a simple activity.
First, I’d like to go through some of the common definitions of sport and point out their inadequacies and/or downfalls.
Any activity that is competitive in nature.
This is an incredibly broad definition of sport. Using this definition you could certainly include activities such as staring contests, poster drawing contests, or even sales contests as sport. This is wholly inadequate for me, as I believe too many non-sport activities are included using such a broad and vague definition. Most people probably wouldn’t consider playing a game of Monopoly, Scrabble, or chess as engaging in a sport. Interestingly, should we even consider this definition by itself, it essentially disqualifies hunting since there isn’t an explicit competitive nature in sport hunting.
Any activity that is physical and competitive in nature.
Adding the word physical to the aforementioned definition makes it much more inclusive, but still is vague enough to include some non-sport activities, such as beer pong and paper football. As much as some may argue that they’re sports, I’d argue otherwise.
So with those two commonly used definitions disqualified, I submit the following Five Principles of Sport. While they aren’t necessarily meant to disqualify any activity which does not satisfy every principle, I would argue that the activities which satisfy the most principles should be considered more of a sport or more sport-like than ones that do not.
1. It requires advanced physical competence.
This effectively disqualifies activities such as computer and video games (finger reflexes notwithstanding), board games, and even those activities which require basic physical competence, such as walking.
2. It requires advanced, unlimited strategy.
Now we get into a more controversial point. While activities with basic strategies are OK, activities we generally consider as sports tend to have advanced strategies, and oftentimes are even unlimited. For example, in baseball there are advanced strategies in batting and pitching, but basic strategies generally rule fielding. Hockey, meanwhile, has advanced, unlimited strategies because of its use of the wide-open ice and the dynamic nature of its offensive and defensive transition.
3. Each party must be in direct competition. Further, a score should be as a result of a negative effect or action on or from the opponent.
This point also tends to be controversial because it disqualifies activities that are generally considered by most to be sports: track and field, gymnastics, and swimming. This is because the participants of these activies are essentially competing against themselves, and their personal score is then ranked against others’ personal scores. For example, in track or swimming, the person running or swimming doesn’t have a direct effect on his or her opponents. While you can infer an indirect effect of knowing your opponents are in front of or behind you, your participation in the event doesn’t require you to inflict a negative consequence on your opponent.
4. Each party must have an equal chance of winning.
While this is a lesser controversial point, it does disqualify a particular activity: billiards and related games. In these activities the person who begins the game can continue until he or she makes a mistake and does not make a shot. Should a shot never be missed, he or she can effectively win the game without the opponent ever getting a chance.
5. The scoring must be adjudicated without bias.
Many of the activities that are disqualified using this point are also disqualified under the third point, such as figure skating and diving. In each of these activities the scoring is inherently and explicitly determined, affected, and influenced by personal bias and prejudice. Sports should have scoring procedures that are unbiased and generally uncontroversial.
By using my Five Principles of Sport, most generally accepted sports are still supported, such as soccer, baseball, football, hockey, and other team sports. Even individual sports such as tennis and golf are supported to varying degrees. But I think what these five principles do best is define the varying levels of sport, and determine which sports are perhaps designated as the most sound when considering them in terms of game theory. To that extent, I think the list is relatively persuasive, inclusive, and definitive.
As a past subscriber to the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, the underlying principles of sports and game theory interest me. A recent conversation with a friend led me to stumble on a particular interest point of team sports: in some sports there’s a player with disproportionate power. That is, there’s usually a player whose involvement has an adverse effect on the game.
In baseball, for example, there’s the pitcher. The other position players — that is, positions like first, third, outfield, etc — rely directly on the pitcher’s performance. If the pitcher is spectacular, the position players’ responsibilities become routine and almost negligible. If the pitcher isn’t effective, the position players’ responsibilities become very important. Everything hinges on the pitcher’s abilities.
Turning this around to offense, you can still make the case that the pitcher’s involvement on defense is still much greater than the third batter’s involvement on offense. The third and fourth batters on the offensive team are generally regarded as their best hitters — the hitters with power and who hit consistently. But these hitters rarely hit over .350 even though they’re regarded as the best. The position of power is still the pitcher.
Another sport where this is unequivocally true is hockey. While there are six players per team on the ice at once, a single position has the most effect on the game: the goaltender. A team’s success is often indicative of how well their goaltender plays, which is why the successes of teams such as the New Jersey Devils can owe much of their success to Martin Brodeur, considered one of the best in the history of the National Hockey League. While a goaltender will generally face around 25 shots a game, they’re expected to stop at least 91% of shots. Any less than 91% is generally considered less than stellar in today’s game.
American Football, however, has a variable position of power in its quarterback. With the running game becoming so popular, the power of the quarterback is perhaps diminished or, at the very least, not as great as its baseball and hockey counterparts, where the power is much more evident.
Basketball, too, seems to be vague in this area. While much is made of the point guard’s playmaking abilities, I’m not familiar enough with the sport to know if this individual has an adverse effect on the game. Doing a quick search over the current season’s NBA statistics, guards account for six of the top 10 scorers in basketball while forwards account for four of the top 10; without it being statistically significant, it’s difficult to determine the position of power.
Perhaps going against the theory is soccer (or “football” to the rest of the world). While strikers and goaltenders tend to get much of the glory, there doesn’t seem to be any one position which adversely affects the outcome of the game.
Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between those sports with powers of position and those that do not. For example, taking into consideration a few aspects of each sport:
- Team size: the position of power sports have nine (baseball) and six (hockey). Non-position of power sports have 11 (football and soccer) and five (basketball).
- Scores: the position of power sports have low (hockey) and mid (baseball), while non-position of power sports have high (basketball and football) and low (soccer).
- Dynamic vs. static defense and offense, meaning the transition between offense and defense is during game play (dynamic) as opposed to structured (static): position of power sports include dynamic (hockey) and static (baseball), while non-position of power sports also include dynamic (basketball and soccer) and static (football).
It’s interesting to consider how sports come to be and what disproportionate advantages occur throughout that particular sport due to rules or positions. It’s the goal of each sport, in my opinion, to use game theory to structure the sport so that no rule or position can be used to manipulate the objectivity of the game.
But I’ll get more into my theory of sport some other day.